4/06/2015

Apple’s ‘spaceship’ campus taking shape, new drone video reveals

Located just a five-minute drive from its current headquarters, Apple’s ‘spaceship’ campus is rapidly taking shape, suggesting the first workers will be walking through its doors in 2016 as planned.
The information comes courtesy of a new drone video posted on YouTube in recent days. A number of UAV enthusiasts have been turning up outside Apple’s construction site in recent months, taking their camera-equipped flying copters high above where the new buildings are going up.
Compared to earlier videos, this latest one shows the location at its busiest, with an abundance of huge cranes dotted about the site and masses of building materials spread about the place.

For the first time, we can see more than simply the foundations of the circular structure that’ll form the central part of the new campus. In other words, work has started on the donut-shaped building itself, as well as on other associated structures nearby.
The enormous construction site is busy from 7am to 7pm weekdays and from 9am to 6pm weekends, with drivers in the vicinity recently warned to expect traffic disruption as construction work intensifies.
Related: GoPro said to be developing own consumer drone for launch this year
Apple’s new campus spreads across 176 acres and will include four floors of office space, a research and development facility, fitness centers, dining facilities, and a 1,000-seat underground auditorium.
A network of jogging paths are set to wind through the expansive grounds, with shade offered by around 7,000 trees.
The futuristic-looking campus, which will feature a solar-paneled roof, will become the main workspace for around 14,000 Apple employees. The striking design is the work of acclaimed UK architect Norman Foster, though the project was the long-time ambition of Steve Jobs, who championed the plan up until his death in 2011.
This latest video was shot in super high-res 4K with a GoPro Hero4 Black camera attached to a foldable Tarot 680 Pro hexacopter frame, and edited using Final Cut Pro X.